An all-party meeting will be held here on October 21 to arrive at a consensus on the implementation of the Kasturirangan panel report.
Briefing the cabinet decisions on Thursday, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said that it has to be ensured that common people should not suffer when the report is being implemented. A practical approach should be adopted on the issue, he said.
He pointed out that a Goa-based NGO, Goa Foundation, has moved the Green Tribunal of the Supreme Court seeking to implement the Madhav Gadgil report. The tribunal had sought the stand of the government on the petition. The Centre had told the court that the Gadgil report was not acceptable and it was ready to implement the Kasturirangan panel report.
Chandy said that the Centre’s decision had brought relief to Kerala. He said that the Centre had sought the opinion of the state governments concerned in implementing the Kasthurirangan panel report. Kerala has intimated its preliminary stand on the issue. The final stand will be intimated only after the all-party meet.
He said that the Kasturirangan report was comparatively more acceptable to the State though it has also certain directives which are against the interests of the state. The state’s reservations will also be intimated to the Centre and the Supreme Court.
LDF Hartal Today
The LDF Wayanad district committee has called a dawn-to-dusk hartal in Wayanad on Friday to protest against the directive issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to implement the recommendations in the Madhav Gadgil Committee report on Western Ghats.
Announcing the hartal, LDF district committee convener K V Mohanan said that the implementation of the controversial report would result in blatant violations of human rights. He said the LDF was not against environment conservation, but it would oppose unimaginative and impractical proposals that would do more harm than good to human beings.
All essential services like hospital, media, milk will be exempted from the hartal. The Kasturirangan panel, had recommended the inclusion of 13 villages in the district in the ecologically sensitive zone category.